In post-payment franking machines, the postal administration or one of its services in charge of a number of franking machines requires monthly returns from each user of daily readings of the machine's up meter state. The up meter gives the total value of franking operations performed by the machine as franking takes place.
These readings are entered into a sheet referred to in France as the "fiche mensuelle de depot" (i.e. monthly filing sheet). The sheet is filled in on a daily basis.
It is used for billing purposes.
At the end of each day, the user enters on the sheet by hand:
the state of the machine up meter; and
the daily expenditure of the machine which is obtained by taking the difference between the state that has just been entered and the previously entered state.
At regular intervals (with allowance being made for public holidays) the user gives the filled-in sheet to the service in charge of the machine.
In addition to the above items, further information is written on the sheet by the user. This comprises:
the name and address of the user;
the up meter total (also known as the "index") at the end of the previous reporting period;
the date of the end of the current reporting period;
the number of the machine; and
its expenditure during the current reporting period, for example monthly expenditure obtained by summing the daily expenditures which appear on the sheet.
The user must also cause a zero value stamp to be franked in the top righthand corner of the sheet, thereby enabling the postal administration to check print quality.
Advantageously, the sheet is numbered. It is taken from a pad and each sheet is associated with a duplicate retained by the user.
These sheets which are used for billing each user for the value of postage franked during the reporting period are also used for monitoring consistency of expenditure from the daily readings, for the purpose of detecting attempts at fraud and possibly for providing a basis on which a compromise settlement can be reached on the probable amount of expenditure to be billed.
This procedure of filling in sheets is awkward for the user who must do it on a daily basis and also for the postal service which makes use of the sheets. Further, sheets may be badly filled in, they may be unreadable or incomplete or they may contain errors. A postal service employee has to correct errors and omissions, and where necessary go to the user's premises in order to verify and complete the information on the sheet. This checking and error correction delays billing.
In addition to these drawbacks related to the apparent quality of a filled-in sheet, the postal service must also key in the data entered on the sheets prior to making out the corresponding bills. Further checking is performed at this stage, in particular to verify a degree of consistency between the expenditure to be billed this time and previously billed expenditures.
If any new problem should occur, a postal service employee must likewise visit the user, thereby giving rise to a further delay in billing.
In addition to delays in billing, such actions require the postal service to have a large number of employees engaged on checking and correction operations.
With pre-payment franking machines, the conventional practice is to cause the machines to lock up when the value to be franked exceeds the amount of credit remaining in the machine concerned.
The user must therefore refill the machine with credit from time to time as a function of machine utilization.
In pre-payment machines, a historical account is normally available of the total value of franking operations performed by the machine, of the total value of credit ever loaded into the machine, and of the credit balance remaining. It is also common for the total number of pieces franked to be made available as well, with all of said quantities enabling the operation of each machine to be checked. By comparing the value of a franking operation to be performed with the value of the remaining balance, the machine is capable of locking up, where necessary. This historical accounting also allows the postal service to verify that the machine is being used properly. The values are checked as a general rule, whenever the machine receives new credit. They may also be verified on specific requests and/or during a visit by the postal service to the user.
The checking performed is based on consistency between the total value of the credits successively loaded into the machine as recorded by a cumulative meter and the total value of franking operations performed as recorded by the up meter plus the state of the down meter which ought to correspond to the difference between the states of the cumulative meter and the up meter. These checks are performed on the basis of the states of the meters as conveyed to the postal service each time the meter is loaded with credit, even if it is the user who directly performs the operation of loading the machine with credit. It is therefore important for the credit-loading means to remain under the control of the postal service.
Thus, credit-loading means may make use of a telephone link between the user and a postal service processing center. A special interchange procedure is established between the user and the processing center during which the states of the meters are transmitted to the center together with the requested new amount of credit to be loaded, these amounts are recorded at the center and authorization is given to the user to load the requested amount of credit.
In a variant, these means may make use of a credit loading card which includes at least one memory. The card is placed alternatively in a read/write terminal at the processing center and in a read/write terminal on the franking machine. The card is suitable for being written to irreversibly by the processing center to provide directives, such as a defined amount of credit to be loaded into the machine, and by the machine to specify its various states. The card allows the machine to read information written therein by the center and it allows the center to read information written therein by the machine.
The checks on machine operation performed by the postal service are then performed at the processing center on the basis of the data it receives.
In the event of anomalies being detected or in the event of a machine breakdown, a postal service employee visits the user.
Nevertheless, these various checks are not completely satisfactory in avoiding possible attempts at fraud concerning the amount of credit actually loaded into the machine by the user. It remains difficult to establish a satisfactory compromise settlement between the postal service and the user.
The object of the present invention is to provide a franking machine providing increased security and enabling a reliable prior state to be found at any time, and consequently making it possible to establish automatically the monthly filing sheets required for post-payment machines or to perform verifications or checks on the credit-loading operations actually performed by the user, with said checks being performable at any moment and not only at the times when credit is loaded.